The Gest of Beren and Lúthien

[Aiwendil]

I love the Gest. I know a lot of people feel that Tolkien was not at his best with rhyming couplets, or that the form is too repetitive and not suitable for a long narrative, but personally I don't agree with either of these complaints. Certainly some passages are better than others, but even in its weakest moments the Lay seems to me to retain a wonderful lyricism and vivacity.

I agree with Mnemosyne that the post-LotR revision is better than the original. Indeed, I would say that the quality of Tolkien's poetry in general was higher in the period during and after the writing of LotR than before. To my ear, the revision is more sweetly evocative in passages such as:

When sky was clear and stars were keen,
then Dairon with his fingers lean,
as daylight melted into eve,
a trembling music sweet would weave
on flutes of silver, thin and clear
for Luthien, the maiden dear.

And the description of Morgoth and the Dagor Bragollach is more dreadful and powerful:

A king there sat, most dark and fell
of all that under heaven dwell.
Than earth or sea, than moon or star
more ancient was he, mightier far
in mind abysmal than the thought
of Eldar or of Men, and wrought
of strength primeval; ere the stone
was hewn to build the world, alone
he walked in darkness, fierce and dire,
burned, as he wielded it, by fire.

Originally Posted by Thinlomien

My second question is not only related to The Gest itself, but to Tolkien's writing in general. I read a few lines of The Gest aloud to A Little Green and her first comment was: "Why did a person who could write like that bother to write prose?"

In a sense this is sort of like asking "if Beethoven was so good at writing string quartets, why did he ever write symphonies?" Poetry and prose are each valuable in their own way, and the existence of one doesn't obviate the need or desire for the other. Tolkien was good at both, just as Beethoven was a master both of the symphony and the quartet (and just about any other form of music you can name).


It is true, though, that Tolkien's output of poetry declined significantly in quantity over the course of his life. He never gave up poetry completely - the revision of the Gest around 1950 is one indication of that. But I think that the success of LotR gave him an impulse to write more prose (and in particular to complete The Silmarillion) that largely trumped his impulse toward poetry.